Oriol Quinquillà Capdevila

IE blocking a cookie in an iframe

2010-03-10T19:30:00.001+01:00

Today I have found a quite criptic error. It happends to IE8 and probably previous versions, but not in Firefox 3.5. If you try to send a cookie in an iframe (to the same domain as the parent page) IE will block it. The solution to this is quite criptic, but easy: just add the following line:

HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("p3p","CP=\"IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT\"");

Thanks to the author of this post where I found the solution: http://adamyoung.net/IE-Blocking-iFrame-Cookies.

An error has occured which stops Business Contact manager for Outlook from starting

2009-12-29T17:40:00.001+01:00

You install BCM successfully, you start Outlook normally, a dialog to configure BCM turns into the screen, you follow the wizard and at the end of the process you receive the following message which prevents from configuring:

An error has occured which stops Business Contact manager for Outlook from starting.

Try the following: run Outlook as administrator, only once. It worked for me.

My configuration: W7 32 bits + Office 2007 + BCM

BPOS: Application is unable to connect; if this problem persists, contact your service administrator

2009-12-20T12:51:00.001+01:00

Configuring the BPOS Sign in tool the following message appears:

Application is unable to connect; if this problem persists, contact your service administrator.
La aplicación no puede conectarse; si el problema persiste, contacte con su administrador.

The root of the problem is a miss-configuration of the permissions of the certificates store. To solve it try the following command (run it from an admin account):

cacls "%appdata%\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA" /t /e /c /g %userdomain%\%username%:F

Solution originally posted here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/onlineservicessigninapplication/thread/548c57b4-dc62-4638-9e81-57eabc8af6d2

Using a GridView only with code in a SharePoint (2007) WebPart, or in asp.net

2009-11-28T22:15:00.001+01:00

(Without using SmartPart)

Using a GridView binded to a (Sql)DataSource is pretty easy in a asp.net application where we can drag and drop the components onto the designer, and follow the related wizards. However, this is not that easy in a SharePoint WebPart, as we have to do everything programmatically.

My objective was creating a grid in a WebPart in which one of the columns was editable, with a drop down list. I started playing with the WebPart, but as the problem was how to use the components by code I switched to a asp.net application, to make it work. What I am presenting here is how to create a GridView linked to a SqlDataSource by code. Moving this to a WebPart is trivial.

First of all the scenario:

We are going to create a GridView.
Linked to a SqlDataSource
We are going to use Northwind database.
We will present the Products table, only two fields for simplicity:
- ProductId: readonly
- SupplierId: editable with a combo

To better illustrate the example below you have two screenshots. The first one is the GridView showing all the values. The second one is the GridView in editing mode, with the drop down list on the supplier column.

As I told you to make it easy I started creating an asp.net application. As we want to do everything by code I just added a simple Panel to dinamically add the GridView inside afterwards.

    1 <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true"  CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>
    2 
    3 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    4 
    5 <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    6 <head runat="server">
    7     <title></title>
    8 </head>
    9 <body>
   10     <form id="form1" runat="server">
   11         <asp:Panel ID="Panel1" runat="server"/>
   12     </form>
   13 </body>
   14 </html>

In the code behind is where we find the interesting part. Here you have the using statements I needed.

1 using System;

2 using System.Collections.Generic;

3 using System.Linq;

4 using System.Web;

5 using System.Web.UI;

6 using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

7 using System.Data;

8 using System.Data.SqlClient;

9 using System.Collections.Specialized;

This is the Page definition. In case of a WebPart this would be a child class of the asp.net WebPart class. We will need to use both a SqlDataSource and a GridView in many events, so we declare them globally and we create them.

To bind data to a GridView there are many other ways, but SqlDataSource just streamlines all the operations of selecting and modifying data to the database.

Please do not take into account I didn’t follow any naming conventions and some good practices were just ignored –I just created it to discover how to make it work.

11 public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page

12 {

13 SqlDataSource sqlSource = new SqlDataSource();

14 GridView datagrid = new GridView();

According to MSDN documentation the event to create controls is PreInit, so we will configure the GridView and SqlDataSource properties here. I was not sure if the Init method would be suitable to do this too; if someone wants to post his/her opinion it will be appreciated. In a WebPart the equivalent to this event is OnPreInit –just write down override inside the class definition and Intellisense will show you the event signature.

First of all we create the SqlDataSource. Some tips to avoid weird errors, and annotations:

   Remember to add the SqlDataSource control to the Controls matrix.
Obviously, substitute the connection string with a suitable one for you, as well as the select and update commands. Remember to add the parameters if you change them.
UpdateCommand, DeleteCommand and InsertCommand are actually optional. In this example I just implemented UpdateCommand, because it was the only operation (appart from selecting) that I needed.
Notice that we set an ID of the control.
 

17 protected void Page_PreInit(object sender, EventArgs e)

18 {

19 sqlSource.ConnectionString = "Data Source=MUNTANER\\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=Northwind;Integrated Security=True";

20 sqlSource.SelectCommand = "SELECT [ProductID], [SupplierID] FROM [Products]";

21 sqlSource.UpdateCommand = "UPDATE [Products] SET [SupplierID] = @SupplierID WHERE [ProductID] = @ProductID";

22 //DeleteCommand="DELETE FROM [Products] WHERE [ProductID] = @ProductID"

23 //InsertCommand="INSERT INTO [Products] ([SupplierID]) VALUES (@SupplierID)"

24 sqlSource.UpdateParameters.Add(new Parameter("supplierid", System.TypeCode.Int32));

25 sqlSource.UpdateParameters.Add(new Parameter("productid", System.TypeCode.Int32));

26 sqlSource.ID = "sqlSource";

27 Controls.Add(sqlSource);

After configuring the SqlDataSource we configure the GridView. A GridView is composed of a sequence of fields (columns). We could make the GridView to create them automatically, but then we could not use a dropdownlist for the Supplier field (instead I think it always present a Textbox). Therefore we set the attribute AutoGenerateColumns to false and we create:

One CommandField, the column with the edit button.
One BoundField, the column with the ID. A boundField is the default field type. It just displays information and it presents a textbox to edit it. In this case we set it readonly, as we do not want to edit it.
One TemplateField. If we want to use custom controls in a column we have to use this kind of field. A template field has templates for some usages of the field, for example a template when it is presented without editing (Item template) and a template when it is in edit mode (EditItemTemplate). There are more templates to be customized, such as Header and Footer templates. Here we find one of the tricky aspects we we use GridView in code: we have to create a template field, which means we have to create a class following a special interface. We will see it after.
Some configurations of the GridView I used:
- As I told you: AutoGenerateColumns must be false.
- DataKeyNames: this is the primary key of the table. I think it should be mandatory, but I didn’t try to run the example without setting this property.
- AllowSorting: optional; it creates a link on the headers to sort the columns.
- Be very careful on this attribute: DataSourceID. We use it to bind with the datasource. There is something very weird on this: I tried to set the property DataSource with the variable sqlSource and do a DataBind (which is for me the normal way) but it didn’t work. But setting it with the ID it does work. I do not understand why, if anyone has the solution it will be appreciated.

As I told you before remember to add the GridView to the Controls matrix.

29 // Columna 0

30 CommandField buttons = new CommandField();

31 buttons.ShowEditButton = true;

32 datagrid.Columns.Add(buttons);

34 // Columna 1

35 BoundField productIdField = new BoundField();

36 productIdField.HeaderText = "Product";

37 productIdField.DataField = "productid";

38 productIdField.SortExpression = "productid";

39 productIdField.InsertVisible = false;

40 productIdField.ReadOnly = true;

41 datagrid.Columns.Add(productIdField);

43 // Columna 2

44 TemplateField comboField = new TemplateField();

45 comboField.HeaderText = "Supplier";

46 comboField.SortExpression = "supplierid";

47 comboField.ItemTemplate = new ComboTemplate(ListItemType.Item, "supplierid");

48 comboField.EditItemTemplate = new ComboTemplate(ListItemType.EditItem, "supplierid");

49 datagrid.Columns.Add(comboField);

51 datagrid.AutoGenerateColumns = false;

52 datagrid.DataKeyNames = new string[] { "productid" };

53 datagrid.AllowSorting = true;

54 datagrid.DataSourceID = "sqlSource";

55 Panel1.Controls.Add(datagrid);

56 }

This is the template class. One of the tricky things I had to discover is that it has to implement IBindableTemplate. Be careful as in MSDN there is an example with ITemplate, which works fine to show information but it is not suitable to return back information when the user changes it in editing mode.

Most important to understand about this class is:

There is a method called InstantiateIn (automatically created by Visual Studio when the interface is created). Here is where we are going to create the control in Item mode, Edit mode or others. In our example in Item mode we will create a simple literal, and in edit mode a dropdownlist.
ExtractValues method is where we push back the user changes in edit mode.
We facilitate the usage of the templates by storing the template type (Item, Edit, other) and the column name which relates the information (in the database, in our case). This information is initialized in the constructor of the class.

Here you can see the class definition, the class members and the constructor. The DropDownList must be a class member as it is used in some events.

58 public class ComboTemplate : IBindableTemplate

59 {

60 ListItemType templateType;

61 string columnName;

62 DropDownList ddl = new DropDownList();

65 public ComboTemplate(ListItemType type, string colname)

66 {

67 templateType = type;

68 columnName = colname;

69 }

Maybe you should read this part after you have understood instantiateIn. Here is where we create the data binding between the literal, in item mode, and the database information.

To do this we use the DataBinding event. This event occurs when the binding should be done. To be sincere I copied and pasted this code from a MSDN example of DataBinding, and it worked. I guess what the code does: it stores the database value by using a DataBinder object and evaluating the data of the container, and taken the given column… but I do not understand fully the details, so I can not really explain you (again if someone knows…).

What you should care in this method is the type of control you use for assigning the value. If you use a Literal control its ok; if you instead use another control (such a Label) you should cast the sender to a Label type (or the appropriate one for you). Maybe you should change as well the lc.Text line accordingly.

71 void lc_DataBinding(object sender, EventArgs e)

72 {

73 Literal lc = (Literal)sender;

74 GridViewRow container = (GridViewRow)lc.NamingContainer;

75 object dataValue = DataBinder.Eval(container.DataItem, columnName);

76 if (dataValue != DBNull.Value)

77 {

78 lc.Text = dataValue.ToString();

79 }

80 }

ExtractValues is the method to push back the changed information to the SqlDataSource. It gets the value and assigns to a newly created dictionary (the method expects a hashtable to be returned).

Be careful if you do not use a DropDownList to change the 88th line. In this line you should assign the data that the user has edited.

82 #region IBindableTemplate Members

84 System.Collections.Specialized.IOrderedDictionary IBindableTemplate.ExtractValues(Control container)

85 {

86 OrderedDictionary dict = new OrderedDictionary();

88 string value = ddl.SelectedValue.ToString();

89 dict.Add(columnName, value);

91 return dict;

92 }

94 #endregion

96 #region ITemplate Members

InstantiateIn is the method that creates the controls. As we designed the class to allow many templates to be created, it checks which template should be created and it creates a control according to it.

The only interesting ones for this example are:

Item template: it creates a Literal control. To databind this literal control DataBinding event must be implemented (see upwards). Remember to add it to the container Controls array.
EditItem: it creates a DropDownList control. When we edit our combo should show us a list of suppliers, which actually is not the same datasource as our GridView (products). Here a new SqlDataSource with a select query for suppliers should be done, but with the aim of reducing the amount of code the same datasource as before is used. If you try this example you will see that the dropdown show a lot of suppliers, and repetitions of them, as it actually queries the column suppliers of the product table. But as I told you the aim of this was just learning about how to use it.

98 public void InstantiateIn(System.Web.UI.Control container)

99 {

100 Literal lc = new Literal();

101 switch (templateType)

102 {

103 case ListItemType.Header:

104 lc.Text = "" + columnName + "";

105 container.Controls.Add(lc);

106 break;

107 case ListItemType.Item:

108 lc.DataBinding += new EventHandler(lc_DataBinding);

109 container.Controls.Add(lc);

110 break;

111 case ListItemType.EditItem:

112 ddl.DataSourceID = "sqlSource";

113 ddl.DataTextField = "supplierid";

114 ddl.DataValueField = "supplierid";

115 container.Controls.Add(ddl);

116 break;

117 case ListItemType.Footer:

118 lc.Text = "" + columnName + "";

119 container.Controls.Add(lc);

120 break;

121 }

122 }

123

124 #endregion

125 }

126

That’s all, what it comes now is not necessary for the example.

I also did a trial with a TextBox template; I just posted it just in case it is useful for someone.

127 public class TexBoxTemplate : IBindableTemplate

128 {

129 ListItemType templateType;

130 string columnName;

131 TextBox tb = new TextBox();

132

133

134 public TexBoxTemplate(ListItemType type, string colname)

135 {

136 templateType = type;

137 columnName = colname;

138 }

139

140 void lc_DataBinding(object sender, EventArgs e)

141 {

142 Literal lc = (Literal)sender;

143 GridViewRow container = (GridViewRow)lc.NamingContainer;

144 object dataValue = DataBinder.Eval(container.DataItem, columnName);

145 if (dataValue != DBNull.Value)

146 {

147 lc.Text = dataValue.ToString();

148 }

149 }

150

151 void tb_DataBinding(object sender, EventArgs e)

152 {

153 TextBox lc = (TextBox)sender;

154 GridViewRow container = (GridViewRow)lc.NamingContainer;

155 object dataValue = DataBinder.Eval(container.DataItem, columnName);

156 if (dataValue != DBNull.Value)

157 {

158 lc.Text = dataValue.ToString();

159 }

160 }

161

162 #region IBindableTemplate Members

163

164 System.Collections.Specialized.IOrderedDictionary IBindableTemplate.ExtractValues(Control container)

165 {

166 OrderedDictionary dict = new OrderedDictionary();

167

168 string value = tb.Text;

169 dict.Add(columnName, value);

170

171 return dict;

172 }

173

174 #endregion

175

176 #region ITemplate Members

177

178 public void InstantiateIn(System.Web.UI.Control container)

179 {

180 Literal lc = new Literal();

181 switch (templateType)

182 {

183 case ListItemType.Header:

184 lc.Text = "" + columnName + "";

185 container.Controls.Add(lc);

186 break;

187 case ListItemType.Item:

188 lc.DataBinding += new EventHandler(lc_DataBinding);

189 container.Controls.Add(lc);

190 break;

191 case ListItemType.EditItem:

192 tb.DataBinding += new EventHandler(tb_DataBinding);

193 container.Controls.Add(tb);

194 break;

195 case ListItemType.Footer:

196 lc.Text = "" + columnName + "";

197 container.Controls.Add(lc);

198 break;

199 }

200 }

201

202 #endregion

203 }

204

205 }

I hope this helps to anyone that needs to use GridView programmatically in a WebPart or asp.net application.

Recursos de MOSS2007 para Project Managers

2009-06-04T18:45:00.001+02:00

Planificación y metodología

Home de SharePoint en Technet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/default.aspx
Planning: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261834.aspx, fijaros que aquí podéis encontrar:

Downloadable book: Planning and architecture for Office SharePoint Server 2007, que es un documento Word de especificación/diseño “maestro” para guiar un proyecto,
“Technical diagrams and other supplemental documentation”, que son diagramas Visio (en mi opinión más interesantes comercialmente que técnicamente)

Template Microsoft Office Project para un deploy de SharePoint: http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?assetid=TC102750081033&QueryID=xRZF5vZ0U0&respos=1&rt=2&pid=CT102530621033

Arquitectura y diseño tecnológico

Best practices: Sharepoint Guidance (on-line) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd203468.aspx, download offline: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C3722DBA-6EE7-4E0E-82B5-FDAF3C5EC927&displaylang=en
SDK (que es básicamente unos ficheros de ayuda y algunos “starters” de código): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms550992.aspx, versión para descargar: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D94E307-67D9-41AC-B2D6-0074D6286FA9&displaylang=en
Dentro del SDK encontraréis los Visual How-tos, en mi opinión muy útiles: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd146863.aspx

Aceleradores de desarrollo

El código incluido en el SDK
Recursos en CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/site/search?projectSearchText=sharepoint
Herramienta comercial BDC: http://www.lightningtools.com/bdc-meta-man/default.aspx

Generic code to serialize a DataTable

2009-03-29T11:49:00.001+02:00

Just add this code in your project, and call to the XmlSerialize solution:

///

/// Gets the XML of the passed object.
///

public static string XmlSerialize(object obj)
{
// Validate argument 'obj'
if (obj == null)
throw new ArgumentNullException("obj", "Argument 'obj' is null");

XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType());
UTF8Encoding utf8 = new UTF8Encoding(false, false);
string xml = null;

using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
{
using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(ms, utf8))
{
ser.Serialize(sw, obj);
xml = utf8.GetString(ms.GetBuffer());
}
}

return xml;
}

Microsoft en el Mobile World Congress

2009-02-17T17:07:00.001+01:00

A parte de la visita de Steve Ballmer, que después de algunas presentaciones
un tanto estrafalarias aparece en los cursos de oradores (recordemos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc), la atención de esta edición del
Mobile World Congress se me la ha llevado un par de novedades.

HTC continua sorprendiéndoos en positivo con dos magníficos teléfonos: la
HTC Diamond 2
y la HTC Touch Dual
.

Por cierto que ambos teléfonos llavan preinstalados la segunda novedad que
destaco: Windows Mobile 6.5. Aunque mejor que sus predecesores, Microsoft
parece ser que lo único que puede hacer por el momento es seguir los pasos
(muy evidentemente por detrás) del famoso iPhone. No obstante, aparte de lo
obvio (interfaz táctil) se empieza a ver un filón de algo interesante de lo
que probablemente pueda ser un factor diferencial en los próximos meses o
próximas versiones: la sincronización de datos entre todos los dispositivos.
Si no conocéis todavía la tecnología Live Mesh os recomiendo que la provéis
(es gratuita) (Live Mesh Website).

Infopath and Forms Server: Schema validation found non-datatype errors

2009-02-01T13:29:00.002+01:00

While developing a browser enabled Infopath 2007 Form with code I got this
error: " Schema validation found non-datatype errors".

The error was thrown when I tried to set a field of the form to a blank
value (String.Empty).

XPathNavigator nav =
this.MainDataSource.CreateNavigator().SelectSingleNode("/my:" +
DATASOURCE_ROOT + "/my:" + field, NamespaceManager);

Nav.SetValue(value);

After many times of trial and error I found that the problem was actually to
set a value to a field that had not had yet a value, so just making this
check was enough:

if (nav.Value != value)
{
nav.SetValue(value);
}

I.e. if the value is still empty and I want to set String.Empty it actually
does nothing.

This site may harm your computer - a Google's bug?

2009-01-31T16:11:00.002+01:00

No matter the search I do just below each link in Google there is another
which says "This site may harm your computer", and if I want to browse it
I get a big advert from Google. May this be a Google search bug?

The first image shows a search of "Microsoft", and the second one the
message I get when I click the link.

Troubleshooting Excel Services

2008-12-01T18:59:00.000+01:00

I got an "Access denied. You do not have permission to perform this action
or access this resource" while trying to render an Excel in Web Browser
mode. After one hour carefully examining logs I found the problem. The
Shared Services Application Pool was configured with anonymous
authentication in IIS, which lead to an authentication problem.

Excel Services logs, at 12 hive showed the authentication problem:
ExcelService.ProcessRequestIdentity: IIS didn't pass us an authenticated
user, Check that the virtual folder is set to authenticate using
WindowsIntegrated
A user attempted to access Excel Services, but was denied because they do
not have a domain or local machine identity. [User: ]
Access denied. You do not have permission to perform this action or access
this resource. At (..)

IIS logs showed no user was passed to application:
2008-12-01 17:50:24 W3SVC1720207907 VMSHPP 127.0.0.1 POST
/SharedServices1/ExcelCalculationServer/ExcelService.asmx - 56737
VMSHPP\Administrator 127.0.0.1 HTTP/1.1
Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+MS+Web+Services+Client+Protocol+2.0.50727
.3053) - - vmshpp:56737 200 0 0 27634 1207 78

Hope this helps...

Tunning a development virtual machine for Sharepoint

2008-11-14T18:52:00.001+01:00

One of the rules I have set up in my team when developing Sharepoint
projects is to use Virtual Machines. We may use VMWare or Virtual PC,
depending on the machine pattern we take at the beginning of the project.
Though our hardware is usually a high-profiled Dell laptop, it sometimes
becomes a quite slow environment to work.

Four tips to run Sharepoint virtual machines faster I have found so far are:
- Running the machine in an external disk.
- Assigning at least 2 Gb of RAM Memory.
- Stoping search service (when not needed).
- Defragmenting the virtual machine. If you use VMWare you can do it from
the disk tools, in machine settings, which is much more faster.

Hope this helps to anyone working in a similar way...

Troubleshooting Excel Web Service and Visual Studio 2008

2008-11-07T18:09:00.001+01:00

After some hours developing with Excel Web Service and Visual Studio 2008 I have discovered that an only single consideration can save you a lot of time.

When you add the Excel Web Service in Visual Studio 2008 operations will have a different signature compared to MSDN samples, and if you try for example to set a range you may experience some problems with an object of type ArrayOfAnyType.

However all these issues and differences can be avoided with one simple configuration change:

1. Add the Excel Web Service.

2. Click the Visual Studio button to “Show All Files”, in Solution Explorer.

3. The Web Service will appear as a folder. You can click on it and some files appear.

4. You will see a file called Reference.svcmap. Open it.

5. In element: ReferenceGroup

a. In ClientOptions

i. In Serializer: Change Auto to XmlSerializer:
<Serializer>XmlSerializer</Serializer>

And everything will work fine!

In the link below there is a comment that explains what we have done. By default Visual Studio uses a DataContractSerializer, but an XmlSerializer should be used instead.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointexcel/thread/2fd36e6b-5fa7-47a4-9d79-b11493d18107/

The requested range is not a valid sheet location

2008-11-07T16:50:00.001+01:00

I tried the example in MSDN for setting a range of an Excel by using the Excel Web Service. A simplified way of this example is calling the web service in this way:

object[] o1 = new object[1];

object[] o2 = new object[1];

o1[0] = 1;

o2[1] = o1;

excel.SetRangeA1(sessionId, "Hoja1", "c2:c2", o1);

Notice that the last parameter must be an array with an array in each position (a jagged array).

If you add a reference in Visual Studio 2008 this does not work as the last parameter must be of type of ArrayOfAnyType. If you try the following:

ArrayOfAnyType aoat = new ArrayOfAnyType();

aoat.Add(1); // we add an object

excel.SetRangeA1(sessionId, "Hoja1", "c2:c2", aoat);object[] o1 = new object[1];

This will generate an exception: The requested range is not a valid sheet location. The solution is it needs the second dimension:

ArrayOfAnyType aoat = new ArrayOfAnyType();

ArrayOfAnyType aoat2 = new ArrayOfAnyType();

aoat2.Add(1);

aoat.Add(aoat2);

excel.SetRangeA1(sessionId, "Hoja1", "c2:c2", aoat);

This code will work fine.

Growing in IT world

2008-07-10T21:41:00.003+02:00

After many time blogging about Microsoft technology I have a frustration: I have only captured the attention of the blogsphere in career related postings!

Maybe I should only post my thougts about something that really pationates me: how can I be a better IT professional tomorrow?

Why Excel opens inside IE window?

2007-03-04T20:56:00.000+01:00

When you click to an Excel file on the web you may have experienced different behavious: sometimes Excel opens inside Internet Explorer and sometimes in a new Excel Window.

I found a usefull tip in Microsoft Excel blog to understand why this happends and how to ensure it allways works as expected: http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2006/09/26/771221.aspx.

BlogOriol Vista SlideBar Gadget

2007-02-20T23:18:00.000+01:00

I'm proud to announce the first beta realease of BlogOriol Vista SlideBar Gadget. This gadget shows the last posts headlines, and links to the whole content, in the Vista SlideBar.

Click here to download it.

Hope you enjoy it!

Excel 2007 does not support synchronization with Sharepoint lists

2007-01-31T08:58:00.000+01:00

There is a loose of functionality when you move from Excel 2003 to Excel 2007. The later can not synchronize with Sharepoint lists, as the predecessor could do. This behaviour is by design, as you can see en this Microsoft KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930006/en-us. The workaround suggested is creating a macro and keeping the file to be synchronized in 2003 format.

How to develop both accessible and outstanding-looking websites

2007-01-29T17:36:00.000+01:00

More and more customers are asking us for developing accessible websites, or or updating existing ones. In most cases they ask to complain WAI standards (http://www.w3.org/WAI/).

Designing a WAI compliant website (even at the lowest level of the standard) with a nice-looking appearance is complex and expensive.

However I have just discovered another approach, at www.gartner.com. Gartner has a secondary accessible website and therefore the main site can still use all the user experience resources available. Great idea!

Is Windows Workflow + MOSS enough?

2006-10-15T10:11:00.000+02:00

Interesting post at http://ablog.apress.com/?p=1275. According to Scot Hillier WF + MOSS will not obsolete workflow vendors. The main reason he points is the difficulty to customize workflows by a business user: out-of-the-box workflow implementations are too simplistic; Sharepoint Designer will require techical stuff to help business users and Visual Studio 2005 developments will require too much development effords when changes are required. Additionally he points that WF + MOSS has not enough montitoring and auditing capabilities (without development).

Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0—Application Development Foundation

2006-07-29T19:02:00.000+02:00

I read "MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0—Application Development Foundation" (Microsoft Press, 2006, ISBN 0-7356-2277-9) to prepare for exam 70-536.

The book covers quite deeply the .NET 2.0 Framework, and it is very advisable for developers and architects that will create applications within this architecture.

The most usefull aspects of the book for me to are explaining the different avaliable collection types; how generics works (I discovered it is a wider concept compared to C++), how to check regular expresions, how to code multithreaded applications, the security model and the explanation of what are application domains.

Introducing to Windows Workflow Fundation

2006-08-23T18:41:00.000+02:00

I have just read Presenting Windows Workflow Fundation Beta Edition (Sams, 2005, ISBN: 0672328488). This book has been written by several key members of the Microsoft team responsible for creating and marketing Windows Workflow Foundation, and covers WWF at an introductory level.

I really encourage .NET Architects to start learning the basics of this technology. From the readings and practices I have coded I believe we are in front of an emerging powerful new framework, that will be certainly usefull not only for typical workflows but for coding aplication logic in a more comprehensive way.

In my honest opinion the most interesting aspects of WWF are the posibility to represent and code application logic in a "flowchart way"; the extensibility of the framework (in terms of activities and plugable services); and the provided core activities (call web services, methods, etc.) and services (persistance, transactions, etc.).

The most important drawbacks I have found are the complexity to understand the concepts behind, and the caveheats related with tread management (workflow is a parallell thread of the aplication).

Got 2 more: 70-528 & 70-536!

2006-07-31T12:20:00.000+02:00

I have just started my way on .net 2.0 certifications with 2 exams. 70-528 (Technology Specialist: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-Based Client Development) and 70-536 (Technology Specialist: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0—Application Development Foundation).

First one is a wide-check of your knowledge on web development in 2.0. It is not a difficult exam. Second one is more tricky as it checks the knowledge you have in specificities of .net 2.0 framework. I recommend to specially make an efford to prepare this exam, as it covers many not-so-common classes (drawing and cryptography-related, for example).

Sharepoint 2003 Indexing Rules

2006-05-25T19:36:00.000+02:00

How Indexing Rules work in Sharepoint 2003 is one of the obscure topics of the product as documentation is quite poor. However, after reading all the available articles and experimenting a lot with it, we have reached some conclusions.

The following apply when creating rules for the Sharepoint Sites (including a Portal Site):

Sharepoint indexer parses sites in an internal format. If you take a look at logs (I really recommend to enable logging of all events when configuring indexing rules) you will see URIs like Sts2://amonlanc:8080/sites/kb/webid=000/listid={5ED439BA-05A2-42A6-BE40-527E7619D82A}/itemid=12 (amonlanc:8080 is the Portal Server) or sps://amonlanc:8080/site$$$site/scope=$$$default$$$/bucketid=3/.
Sharepoint indexer also parses the URL associated with these resources, for certain entities: Sites (http://amonlanc:8080/sites/kb) and List Items (http://amonlanc:8080/sites/kb/Templates/Template%202.html).

You can write rules to include or exclude content to be indexed or searched by specifing Sites and Item URL Patterns. Here are some examples (amonlanc:8080 is a Sharepoint Portal Server):

http://amonlanc:8080/ - Exclude. http://amonlanc:8080/ (with a slash) is the root site (or Portal Site). You can decide to include or exclude it.
http://amonlanc:8080/sites/*/templates/* - Exclude. Do not index items following this URL pattern.
http://amonlanc:8080/sites/test/* - Exclude. Do not index items following this URL pattern.
http://amonlanc:8080/sites/archive/ - Exclude. Do not index this site.
http://amonlanc:8080/* - Include. Index all items following this URL Pattern.

In the index management page you can see the number of documents in the index. This is not really the number of documents you can search information, but the number of documents processed during the indexing process. In the example before, no items where processed for rule [http://amonlanc:8080/sites/archive/ - Exclude] but the site itself; however it will count all the items excluded by the rule [http://amonlanc:8080/sites/test/* - Exclude].

Rules apply from first to last, being the first the most prioritary. This is important, as:

http://amonlanc:8080/sites/kb* - Excluded
http://amonlanc:8080/* - Included

means to exclude one site (kb) while

http://amonlanc:8080/* - Included
http://amonlanc:8080/sites/kb* - Excluded

means to index all contents, including kb site. So order matters.

I'm still working on it so I may publish more details. If you have any doubt or comment please add them to the article and hopefully I will be able to answer it.

Building Webparts for Sharepoint 2003 with Visual Studio 2005

2006-04-26T20:30:00.000+02:00

Yes, it is possible!

Actually jou just have to enable Visual Studio 2005 to generate .NET 1.1 applications. There is a Microsoft-Community add-in for MSBuild that enables this: MSBuild Extras - Toolkit for .NET 1.1 "MSBee". You can download it from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/tools/msbee/default.aspx (you will get a MSI file).

Once you have installed it, this 2 steps will be enough to compile webparts for Sharepoint 2003:

[1] Open you project file with a text editor (notepad for example), and do the following (in the MSBee help file you will find the same but with a VB project):

To import an MSBee .targets file in a C# project file, find the import element for the MSBuild .targets file. For a C# project, the line you are looking for is shown below.
<Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
Immediately under this line, insert the MSBee language-specific target file. For a C# project, you will want to insert the line below.
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\MSBee\MSBuildExtras.FX1_1.CSharp.targets" Condition=" '$(BuildingInsideVisualStudio)' == '' AND '$(TargetFX1_1)'=='true'" />

[2] Open the Visual Studio Command and compile with MSBuild: msbuild [project file] /t:Rebuild /p:TargetFX1_1=true. This generates the binaries under bin\FX1_1\Debug (see the picture).

Maybe you will find usefull to build the solution until no errors are found and afterwards call a script that calls to MSBuild and copies the binaries to the IIS Virtual Directory (usually located at server\\c\inetpub\wwwroot\bin).

I haven't found the way to build the solution inside Visual Studio, yet. I guess it is not that easy (from the help file: "At this time, we are not planning to add IDE support."). Comments are welcome if you know how!

Blogging again

2006-04-04T17:25:00.000+02:00

Today I start this blog... for the first time I'm going to blog about technology (guess... my profession!).